Difference between revisions of "The Dead Hand of Plato"

Revision as of 15:25, 1 January 2015

In his book “The Greatest Show on Earth”, Dawkins argues that while evolution is real it is also hard to understand. People think in categories. Yet, categories do not exist - and the belief in them makes reality harder to understand. He argues that essentialism, which he calls “the dead hand of Plato”, is what keeps people from understanding evolution.

Human language divides animals into different species, although species of animals no not exist in physical reality. In physical reality (which Dakwins calls simply "reality"), only individual animals exist.

In the platonist worldview, each individual animal is nothing more than a shadow of the “idea” of the species. This worldview shackles our understanding of animals into monolithic concepts of species, thus making it impossible for us to understand transitions and intermediate forms – when the truth is that every animal that exists is a transitional form, and that the division into species is more or less arbitrary.

By this argument, Dawkins is indirectly making a strong case for Social Constructionism being highly relevant not only in social science but also in natural science: While our concepts doesn't exist in physical reality, they do affect – and in some cases distort – our perception of this same physical reality. We must therefore keep ourselves aware of them.

Categories are a central part of human lived experience. Dawkins' notion that categories doesn't exist may thus be hard to understand, unless we make a clear distinction between different layers of reality.